I concede that it’s possibly a little from column A, a little from column B when it comes to whether BBC Scotland just force pish down our throats or whether it’s because a lot of working-class Scottish folk just genuinely dislike “intellectual” humour.[1]I think the latter isn’t that true though, as I’m sure there’s plenty of working-class people up here who love Chris Morris and Stewart Lee etc.

I should add that I don’t think there’s anything wrong with lowbrow humour, it’s often what tickles me the most. I just think it’s a little patronising to give Scottish people the shittest form of that and basically nothing else.

I've been collecting the nice hardback editions and there's a bit in one of the introductions (can't remember which one or who it was by) where it's discussed that Schulz really regretted drawing a certain strip which ends with Charlie Brown hugging Snoopy and thinking 'Happiness is a warm hug', because he felt in later years that that was the beginning of people viewing Peanuts as a cutesy folksy heartwarming cartoon, instead of the honest and often brutal depiction of loneliness and failure.

It was Lucy hugging Snoopy and saying "Happiness is a warm puppy" (25 April 1960 ).

It was far from it's prime when it ended, but I'd have been quite happy for them to keep churning out Peep Show every year, to ever diminishing returns. I don't know why they kept having 3 year breaks between seasons, although they did seem to have enormous trouble getting their bit-part actors returning hence every mysteriously disappearing, Sophie having a look/actalike cousin/brother, etc. Maybe if they offered regular work they may have shown a bit more dedication?Also I would be fine with Peep Show carrying with Mark/Jez being a couple of middle aged/old men. I know loads of people in their 40s/50s who are perpetually single and house share like students, it'll be even more common in 20 years. Remember it was unthinkable that so many people would do it in their 30s a generation ago. or maybe Mark could marry someone awful out of fear, and Jeremy can be their weird lodger. There's many directions they could have taken it.

Mitchell/Webb the sketch show should have stayed on Radio 4 with all the other gentle inoffensive unfunny shite. I don't care about Mitchell's posh rants on panel shows, and I don't care about Webb's weepy books or voiceover work. Just gimme more Peep Show!

I agree with this one millon %. I genuinely want to watch Mark and Jeremy get old and weird together, however crap it is.

Remember it was unthinkable that so many people would do it in their 30s a generation ago. or maybe Mark could marry someone awful out of fear, and Jeremy can be their weird lodger. There's many directions they could have taken it.

I wouldn't say it's dogshit, but it's status does mystify me. I think it's boomer-era nostalgia for the most part.

Having said that, it can be really good. A Charlie Brown Christmas is up there with the Muppet Christmas Carol.

Calvin and Hobbes is so, so, so much better overall though.

Calvin and Hobbes is wonderful. Discovered it about twenty years ago after loving Peanuts as a kid. They're not comparable. I mean, they are, obviously - Calvin and Hobbes and CB and Snoopy - but they are very different.

There's also nothing as funny as Spaceman Spiff or the time Calvin cloned himself. Actually maybe when Patty brained herself climbing over the stadium wall to get free baseball caps then tried to make her own ones. And there were a couple of C&H strips that I thought were far too similar too peanuts strips for my liking.

Stewart Lee - knows how to put a show together, but just not very funny. Apart from those interview bits with Chris Morris.

Fast Show - yeah, just too repetitive and cathphrase-y. Down the Line way better.

Monty Python - the 13-year old me thought they were great. The gnarled old me finds them irritating and too self-conscious/self-satisfied with the surreal stuff.

Woody Allen was mentioned a while back. 'Take the Money and Run' is a brilliant comedy film, but he was never as funny after that, though some films have their moments. The books of prose pieces ('Getting Even,' 'Without Feathers,' 'Side Effects') are very funny, too. He's been churning out mostly dreadful shite for the last 20 years.

Non-Spinal Tap Christopher Guest films have all been a bit of a disappointment.

The Goon Show - often spoken of with reverence, but doesn't seem all that to me.

Some comedies age like fine wine, while others age like tramp's piss. Blazing Saddles is extremely dated and unfunny these days.

I have never laughed at a Mel Brooks film, not even Young Frankenstein. I think Mel Brooks himself is a very funny man, but I'd rather listen to him being interviewed than watch one of his laborious comedy romps.

Bill Hicks gives me a really nasty vibe. Vain, phoney, and apathetic. I can't really rationalise it since I like plenty of their comedians that are not classically "nice".

Yes, that's a good description in my view.

There’s something about his performance that feels like he is using them. A desperation to be noticed that directs a manic performance yet exposes a discernible disinterest in the audience. Also present if you watch an early 90s Ben Elton stand up. Just as you say. Vain, phoney. Charmless.

Most other comedians who perform his kind of material (which has already dated horribly) occasionally let the mask slip to reveal their own insecurity and failings to provide a context. Some humanity is recovered in the self-deprecation. Even the likes of Sadowitz do this. But less so with Hicks act, which is off-the-scale in how pleased with itself it is.

Marketed as an urbane subversive truth teller. Apparently just an insecure charmless man with material that even discounting the bleakly cynical mirthless tone of delivery feels more hacky with every passing year.

All good stoner (for lack of a better term) animated comedy is dead because people are too self-aware now. We will never see the likes of Space Ghost Coast to Coast and Aqua Teen again (even if Aqua Teen's corpse stirs a little). Memes effectively make it obsolete, even though there's a huge difference in memes and stoner comedy - it's just that society has lost access to being able to appreciate it, and you would never get more than a handful of viewers.

Bad Education is funny as fuck and really well paced and put together.

I initially didn't like the show, but would sort of go along with that. The class themselves are like a 21st Century Bash Street Kids made flesh and blood. Jack Whitehall's a perfectly decent comic actor ( and crap stand up).

Does Bill Bryson count for inclusion in 'ere? I'm going to assume so, as he's a supposedly " humorous" writer.Anyway, he's an annoying cunt who thinks writing about mundane things in mundane details and pointing out the mundanity of the mundane things is funny and not just fucking annoying and cuntish, and he clearly makes things up when he writes about things like when he's off on his travels round England, cos probably nothing remotely amusing happens to him, people probably see him walking down the streets of Hove or whatever, and clock his fucking beard and fucking glasses and think " Oh, there's that cunt Bill Bryson, I'm avoiding that cunt , right enough", so nothing even remotely interesting or amusing or engaging ever happens to him, the writing about mundane things in a mundane manner cunt.

I'm 50/50 on Bryson having only read two of his books, the first, A Walk In The Woods I found quite interesting if rarely laugh out loud funny, but Notes From A Small Island irritated me no end, I mean he seemed to spend the whole book visiting tiny villages and towns and then moaning that there was nothing interesting going on in the evenings, and it was so repetitive and tedious that I've never been able to understand why people love it so.

I'm 50/50 on Bryson having only read two of his books, the first, A Walk In The Woods I found quite interesting if rarely laugh out loud funny, but Notes From A Small Island irritated me no end, I mean he seemed to spend the whole book visiting tiny villages and towns and then moaning that there was nothing interesting going on in the evenings, and it was so repetitive and tedious that I've never been able to understand why people love it so.

Yes! I possibly came to it expecting too much after hearing all the praise for it, but it seemed to just fall on the wrong side of snide and petty for me. Only read it the once, but from what I recall there was just lots of what you mentioned - moaning about small villages acting in, gasp, small village ways - and also lots of sniping about people he met, some of whom I thought didn't really deserve the character assassination. I don't mind a bit of gentle humorous poking at innocent people, but this just came across as mean.

To be fair, it's been many years since I read it, so I could be misremembering it.

^ Nah, that sounds about right. That's what Bill Bryson does, it's his schtick. Bet he was chuffed to bits when Robert Redford played him in that film, too.

Fair dos. I don't mind that big science book he did, and I'm still reading the one he wrote about the human body, but it put me off reading any of his other travel books. I'll stick to Michael Palin for that.

I've never read a Bill Bryson book but having been a librarian for years I know how popular he is. I was initially surprised to read that he's mean about people he meets, but thinking about it that's exactly what people enjoy hearing isn't it. And I presume he hides behind the justification that he's 'poking fun with genuine affection' which is really slagging off with unearned contempt.